Hoo Ha! is Bad//Dreems fourth album as Ben Marwe and Alex Cameron continue to shine a light on some uncomfortable truths of the band's Australian homeland. This album was written and put together in a disused incinerator in Adelaide that was designed by Walter Burley Griffin that contains Billy Thorpes old Neve console, before they recorded the album with Dan Luscombe at Soundpark Studio in Melbourne.
This opens with Waterfalls a song that tells us they are Wonderful beautiful waterfalls, they ask if you've met there friend Jesus, well no because he's writing this review, this sounds like a male fronted Amyl & The Sniffers or should that be that Amyl sounds like Bad//Dreems as they have been around longer, they also share a producer.
Mansfield 6.0 isn't a costume drama about a park, more a serious look at chemical pollution, mistreatment on the natural world as it tells the story of that weird day of protests and riots in September 2021 by construction workers who objected to mandatory vaccinations they didn't seem to notice the 6.0 earthquake that happened that day as well.
Jack is a bitter rant about the genocide that is celebrated on Australia Day, as they look deep into how the brainwashing of the invading colonizers descendants, the cover ups of all sorts of dreadful torture meted out to the indigenous population.
Shame is a pub rock anthem of regret at the state of the place you grew up, all the shame that's been covered up to allow you to live a prosperous life, as they refuse to accept that reparations can never even be talked about, let alone implemented.
Mallee is a dark distorted look at how the colonizers tried to turn this land into a penal colony, along with all the sorrow that entailed over a slow dismayed tune, they get angrier, more bitter at all the horror that has been hidden, the blood shod for this land that the Mallee grows on.
No Island has the shortest explanation in the band's notes on the album, being about being alone, as this alternative rocker in a Psychedelic Furs style sways and takes you to the darkest loneliest parts of Bad /// Dreems lives.
Southern Heat is dread in the dystopian wastelands north of Adelaide that the Snowtown Killers used to roam, as they try to escape from the clutches of the topless bar the owners chasing them down, as they try not to evaporate in the Southern Heat, as radio interference guitar solo ups the pace.
Black Monday everything is crashing around them, the whole world seems like it's going down, as they riff there way towards the breakdown like refugees from Sandinista era Clash.
Collapse is about trying to avoid reality by going on another weekend bender as the guitars howl in pain before the main riff returns as everything shatters before them.
New Breeze seems to be re-working an old Elvis Costello tune, crossed with some Stranglers as they talk about all sorts of dreadful world events as we sink ever further into the mire.
Desert Television isn't about searching for Crocodile Dundee in the outback, but more of the nightmare of being on a mission to make the desert into the most fascinating landscape despite its arid nothingness, the strings whirl around and the lyrics fly at us as they seek to get that vision back.
See You Tomorrow has cut and paste lyrics taken from a book of Newspaper highlights that come at us thick and fast, all sorts of weird snippets of yeast infections in your fridge today, while the Fall of eastern Russia is a big year for Pulsar, see you tomorrow chaos, lock all the doors.
Godless features special guest Graham Lee from The Triffids on Pedal steel as this slow reflective song of remembrance for the good old days growing up in the burbs with a church on every corner, a sky blue commodore chopped up in the yard, as they re-build it like old school Shade Tree Mechanics.
The album closes with Hoo Ha! A song built around the band's experiments with an Optigon that the producer Dan Luscombe had just bought that just descends into the ether as a cool outro.
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